Posted
by
simoniker
on Thursday June 03, 2004 @08:09AM
from the same-as-it-ever-was dept.

Thanks to the New York Times for its article (free reg. req.) discussing the cresting popularity of retro game chic over many types of media, noting: "Last month Saturn introduced a commercial featuring its Vue sport utility vehicle rolling through a town, absorbing dots to the officially licensed sounds of a grazing Pac-Man. Billboard magazine's Hot 100 singles chart includes 'Game Over (Flip),' a song by the rapper Lil' Flip that contains a beat built from the sounds of Pac-Man." There's also insight into the financial benefits: "Robert Ennis, chief operating officer of Namco, publisher of the transcendent Pac-Man, said that classics represented about 5 percent of his company's revenue. More important, he said, the company's several 'museum' collections have involved little financial risk."

It's also might be worth noting that this may have been the inspiration for (or the other way around) for Pacmanhattan (as seen here [pacmanhattan.com]) which was woefully overlooked in the description.

I find that most of the old games fall into one of two categories: games that we sit back and say 'remember blah blah blah' or games that I still play (Gameboy Advanced, MAME, emulator on my laptop, etc).

Most of those old games are fun for about 5 minutes; long enough to realize that it was better to have just left well enough alone and enjoyed the memories. Otherwise, games like Zelda et al. I currently have in some form or fashion so that I can play them when I want to.

I don't know whether they count as 'vintage' or not but I love downloading and playing old abandonware DOS. Even though it's old and the graphics are normally incredibly blocky, its still fun. I believe firmly in gameplay over graphics.
Getting some of them running can be quite hard though, sometimes a modern machine is just too fast for them.

How much gameplay is there in many of those old DOS games though? I see this opinion that today's games look better but the gameplay is poor in comparison to the games of yesteryear bandied about on Slashdot quite a bit. Just because a game looks like crap, does not mean that it's got amazing gameplay. Likewise, just because a game looks good, the gameplay is not guaranteed to be garbage. Comparing say Commander Keen to Ratchet and Clank, I would say that the latter takes the prize in both the gameplay and graphics departments easily.

There are quite a few games that have signifigant replayability. I trot out Centurion, M1 Abrams battle tank, and blackthorne frequently to run a few missions. I've also got on my list the Forgotten realms gold box AD&D stuff silver queen, hillsfar, pool of radiance, etc.

You would do well to realize that gameplay and graphics are independent of each other. After all, Nethack [nethack.org] has some of the worst graphics around, but the gameplay is incredibly deep; almost any concievable action has been implemented by the Devteam. On the other hand, Morrowind [morrowind.com] has both immersive, open-ended gameplay and pretty graphics. My point? It's certainly possible for a newer game to have good gameplay, and graphics just don't enter into the gameplay equation.

" You would do well to realize that gameplay and graphics are independent of each other."

That's the point I was making, idiot.

"I doubt that anyone would state that simply because a game has outmoded graphics, its gameplay must be excellent."

Again, you're an idiot. Try reading games.slashdot.org for any length of time and you'll see that this argument gets made quite frequently. Try reading what people are meaning rather than what they are simply saying. In conclusion, don't ever reply to anything I post aga

I'm not saying that all DOS games have good gameplay. Nor am I saying that all modern games (good graphics or not) have crap gameplay. I'm just trying to say that I'm not like some people who see a game and immediately dismiss it because it has bad graphics.

Generally I think that games have improved in quality greatly over the years which is why I still buy new games. It's good to occasionally play an old classic though to see how things have moved on.

I was actually fortunate enough to find a 486/66 on the side of the road... took it home, cleaned it up, and installed only DOS on it. No Windows.
I'm in heaven. I've been playing through my old Sierra adventures (and astonishing myself at remembering the solutions to every puzzle after 12 years), and just started a game of Syndicate. Syndicate is the second best game EVER, next to the original X-Com, which I'm also playing. Now if I could just find an extra hour or two in the day.....
Happy gaming al

Well, you'd start by contacting the owners of the property, duh. The Atari brand name belongs to the company that used to be known as "Infogrames" and, I would wager, all the characters, sounds, whatnot also belong to them. Contact their legal department and ask about it.

Or you could do what Aqua Teen Hunger Force did with the Mooninites characters. They were Atari-like without actually being any characters from any specific games. The sound effects associated with them were from very very obscure games.

I completely agree with the earlier comment that gameplay is most important - not the graphics.

Also, perhaps it's my age - I'm now 30 and honestly have less time to play games. I can afford the fifteen minutes needed to play Qix - but something like Final Fantasy X needs to be played in hour sittings!

The NYT article just brushes the surface. For more info on the on-line classic gaming community, check out some of these sites:AtariAge [atariage.com] Retrogaming Radio [retrogamingradio.com] Classic gaming [classicgaming.com]

I grew up in arcades of the 80's. Call me a littled biased, but I find games like Pac-man, asteroids, tempest, and such to be of much higher quality than most modern arcade games. Sure, they have better graphics and take up four times more space and cost two dollars, but they lack certain special something. Dance Dance Revolution is the obvious exception to this.

Anyways, I found myself at one of those kiddie pizza places with a modern arcade last night. And they had Ms. Pac-man, Asteroids and a Galaga machine in these ultra small cabinets, sized for 6 year olds. Only the adults were playing these games, including myself. You should have seen it. Everyone had to lean way over and out in order to reach the controls. Funny stuff.

Recently learned that the Ms. Pac-man / Galaga 20th Anniversary Machines have a very special Easter Egg... Pac-man! After you put in your money and the select screen comes up, enter in UP UP UP DOWN DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT LEFT. You should hear a noise and see the ghost change colors. Press start using the Ms. Pac-Man side and you have Pac-Man. I've verified that this works.

My wife and I have 3 of the retro collections - Konami, Namco and Williams. We grew up on these games, and the ones in the collection are pretty much all twitch games. Great fun for short periods of time and you don't feel too bad if you have to switch off and get back to life (Unlike being midway through a two-hour enduro in Le Mans or GT3).

HOWEVER, why, pray tell, do NONE of these collections have a high-score save, options for control and difficulty, or proper collision detection (Williams, I'm looking at YOU!)?

It's a real PITA to have to remember high scores or keep a piece of paper with scores handy. Those GBAs go everywhere...

Here's a list of the songs I know which are game-influenced. There's probably a very big list but these immediately stand out.

Cocoa Brovaz - Super Brooklyn. This song (IIRC) is set up with not one, but two beats from Super Mario Brothers (the first game from the NES). I believe the beats are the song from level 1-2 (still frightening in a very simple way) and the star/power-up sequence. This one I'm a bit unsure of.

Benefit - Warp to World 6-9. If you read the lyrics [azlyrics.us] and imagine a child-like nasal voice

I was going to respond with "Frogger" by Bad Religion, but then I realized that people who have watched and liked MTV in the past oh, ten years, probably wouldn't be familiar with them or any other decent punk band.

This article seems like a good place to plug my Pacman [angelfire.com] clone/ripoff/project/experiment/what have you. In making my own Pacman game I have come to admire the gameplay, balance, and brilliance of the original more than ever.

In the article, one guy said he owned 16 versions of Pac-Man. I'm nowhere close to that, but I do own five versions, plus two pirated versions. I have the Jakks TV Game, adaptations for the Atari 5200 and Atari 800, and Namco Museum for PlayStation and PlayStation 2. On my computer, I have a copy of the arcade ROM (for use in MAME), and a copy of the Atari 2600 version (ugh). I also have Namco Museum for the Game Boy Advance, but that has Ms. Pac-Man instead.